About Mark Eltringham

Mark is the publisher of Workplace Insight, IN magazine, Works magazine and is the European Director of Work&Place journal. He has worked in the office design and management sector for over thirty years as a journalist, marketing professional, editor and consultant.

Posts by Mark Eltringham:

September 13, 2018

Over half of men want to be more involved in childcare, major new report claims

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News

More than half of men who have children or other caring responsibilities want to be more involved in childcare, a new study commissioned by Business in the Community, in partnership with Santander UK, has found. The Equal Lives research asked 10,225 UK parents for their views on work and care, and found that traditional gender roles in caring are seen as increasingly outdated, with 85 percent of men believing that they should be as involved as women in caring for their children.

September 12, 2018

Work&Place new issue showcases most informed and challenging workplace thinking

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Features, Flexible working, News, Premium Content, Property, Technology, Work&Place, Workplace, Workplace design

The new issue of Work&Place has been published and is free to read on the journal’s new website. Its overall readership is now around 100,000, including in the new Spanish language edition, so it’s not just more accessible, it is even more influential. The journal continues to explore the most cutting-edge ideas surrounding the physical, digital and cultural domains in which we work. The convergence of these elements of the workplace define the greatest challenges we face in the workplace of the early 21st Century. Some of these are addressed in the features included in this edition.

September 10, 2018

Network Rail agrees £1.46bn commercial real estate sale to Telereal Trillium and Blackstone Property

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property

Network Rail has agreed terms with Telereal Trillium and Blackstone Property Partners for the sale of its commercial real estate portfolio. Proceeds from the £1.46 billion transaction will help fund the railway upgrade plan, bringing improvements for passengers and reducing the need for taxpayers to fund the railway, according to a statement from Network Rail. Telereal and Blackstone will hold equal ownership stakes and intend to be long-term owners of the estate. Both parties have adopted a ‘tenants first’ approach, cemented in a tenants’ charter, which offers a commitment to engage with all tenants and communities in an open and honest manner. Telereal will oversee the day-to-day property management of the portfolio.

September 10, 2018

The evolution of the workplace conversation in ten graphs

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Technology, Workplace design

Based on Google Trends data since 2004 and without comment.

Main image: Herman Miller Living Office

September 7, 2018

We should measure wellbeing and security if we want to create Good Work, claims the RSA

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Job security, workplace mental health, and how well-supported workers feel by their employer, should be monitored annually by the government, a report led by the RSA and the Carnegie UK Trust recommends. The need to better monitor quality of work in the UK was called for in RSA chief executive Matthew Taylor’s 2017 employment review for the Prime Minister. The UK Government subsequently committed to delivering on this proposal; and Measuring Good Work now sets out a roadmap for how the ambition can be achieved. The report highlights that employment has a major impact on people’s wellbeing and quality of life, arguing that since the 2008 financial crisis, despite record employment, the overall figure on the number of people in work fails to account for issues like worker pay; whether employees feel they are trapped in a job below their skillset; are working too few or too many hours; or are facing excessive workplace pressure.

September 7, 2018

How Thomas Jefferson came to invent the swivel chair and laptop ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Furniture, Technology, Workplace design

In 1775, Thomas Jefferson was a busy man. As part of the Committee of Five men and at the tender age of 33, he had been charged with drafting the Declaration of Independence that was to be presented to Congress the following Summer. By all accounts, Jefferson was a self-contained and self-sufficient man and, like many great people, a mass of contradictions.

September 7, 2018

Seven workplace stories that have been on our radar this week

by Mark Eltringham • Features, Flexible working, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

How we can win the AI race

The great tech paradox for flexible workspaces

The number one office perk? Natural light

The personality test that conned the world

The insecure nature of work is a result of decisions by corporations and policymakers

Landlords up their game to help occupiers attract staff (paywall)

An architect’s defense of open plan offices

September 6, 2018

Creating a productive workplace for people is all about context

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace, Workplace design

The quest for a proper understanding of the links between the places we work, the things with which we fill them and our wellbeing and productivity has been ongoing for a very long time. It predates our current thinking on productive workplace design and the facilities management discipline as we now know it by decades and has its roots in the design of early landmark offices such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin building and research such as that carried out at the Hawthorne Works in Chicago in the late 1920s. Yet the constantly evolving nature of work means that we are forever tantalised by an idea that we can never fully grasp and makes established ideas seem like revelations.

September 6, 2018

Leading a hybrid future workforce of robots, episodic employees and gig leaders

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

Visions of hybrid workforces, episodic employees, gig leadership and acceptable failure have been unearthed in a new study, ‘Work 2028: trends, dilemmas and choices’, revealing business and society leaders’ projections for the fourth industrial revolution. The project was led by Professor Bernd Vogel at Henley Business School and run in collaboration with Deutsche Telekom and Detecon Consulting, who commissioned Henley to carry out the survey. The research involved interviews with over 50 influential leaders from across a variety of sectors and countries including senior figures from Amazon and Unilever to look at the challenges facing organisations and their future workforce.

September 5, 2018

From FUBAR to Five Star: Delivering Excellent Facilities Management ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, News

Mark Wilcock is an experienced facilities management professional and he has something to share with you. His self-written new book From FUBAR to Five Star: Delivering Excellent Facilities Management offers reflections and guidance on a range of challenges that face facilities managers in their day to day lives. Mark is currently Business Support and Planning Manager at The Co-operative Group based in Manchester and was one of the first three thousand members of the BIFM. He has around 25 years experience in facilities management across a number of sectors and in different countries. In the book he shares his thoughts on key issues related to both the day to day and strategic role of facilities managers. All proceeds from the book will be donated to Alzheimer’s Research. Image: Co-op One Angel Square office Manchester, Buro Happold/David Hopkinson

September 3, 2018

A round up of some of the best recent workplace content from around the web

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Features, Flexible working, Property, Workplace, Workplace design

All the workstyles we have ever loved

Open plan v private offices déjà vu

Britain’s productivity crisis in eight charts

Investors discount office buildings with high WeWork occupancies

Perceptions of pay fairness

Agile humans, and therefore organisations. Just a dream?

Excessive hours and intense work is (sic) bad for your career

September 3, 2018

Commuters could save an hour a week by changing their working hours

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing

Commuters could speed up their journeys by up to 10 miles per hour by starting and finishing work just one hour later or making other changes to their working hours, according to new Government research. The study by Highways England was carried out on a 9-mile-stretch of the M62 which links the M6 near Warrington to the M60 near Manchester. The route is used by 120,000 drivers every day and construction work is currently taking place to upgrade it to a smart motorway, increasing its capacity by a third. Commuters had previously faced speeds of just 36 miles per hour between 5pm and 6pm when almost 9,000 drivers take to the short section of motorway on their way home from work.